Usually when you come to dbzoa.net you probably expect to hear stuff like, "ARGH, FUNIMATION IS THE DEVIL! They have completely ruined DBZ! The only reason they bothered to pay Bruce Faulconer to have his cat Mr. Fluffles dance all over his $10 casio keyboard is because they are greedy, evil, stupid people!" But what about FUNimation's other animes- specifically, Yu Yu Hakusho? How is Yu Yu Hakusho being handled? Yu Yu Hakusho is being treated... wonderfully.
When people talk about the DBZ DVD's they usually complain about- 1. cut material from the Japanese version, 2. cut material from the English version, 3. the price, 4. the lack of inserts, 5. the lack of original cover art, 6. the lack of extras, 7. the lack of translations or acknowledgement of the Japanese cast and 8. the price. None of these apply to FUNimation's first Yu Yu Hakusho DVD set.
Priced at just $75-80 (depending on where you buy it- the Z store charges $100. Also, I'll only be discussing the uncut DVD set. You're an idiot if you actually buy the English-only cut version that's slightly cheaper) it comes with the first 25 episodes and it covers a few sagas and about 20% of the whole series. No arguments there. Every DVD has original cover art and doesn't use any cheaply scanned shots from the show. Some of it's pretty good. Also, each DVD comes with it's own insert. Nice. Now let's look at the content of the DVD's.
In FUNimation's DBZ DVD's they continually tried to come up with "new" and "different" menu styles for just about every DVD. However, at about 70 DVD's they stretched themselves very thin and did a lot of lackluster work. The Yu Yu Hakusho DVD's, on the other hand, all use the exact same menu style setup- one of which is almost flawlessly composed. While keeping this same setup every DVD, FUNimation changes each one a bit to make them all unique and different. And because the English version uses ALL of the original Yu Yu Hakusho music (which is very excellent, btw) the DVD's also use that same music. Lots of catchy tunes can be heard and relistened to from start to finish just by accessing certain parts. Some of which can't even be heard on the actual episodes on the DVD's. No complaints there.
Now let's look at the options- first there's "Play All" which will play all of the English unsubtitled episodes if you click it first or which will play whatever language and subtitles you've selected. Next is "Episodes." This let's you choose each episode and it also divides each episode into 6 different parts, which includes the intro, recap of the next episode and the ending. Next comes- "Language." You can select English or Japanese and choose to give subtitles to either one. After that there's "Yama's Notebook"- which, more specifically, contains the "real extras."
Every extras menu contains a "Character Profiles" sub-menu where you can find general and extra information about various characters. Some of the information (like height and age) is unobtainable from simply watching the episodes, which makes it a nice feature. All the character profiles are pretty well-composed, I might add, so you won't just find a couple of generic and bland lines of general and vague information whenever you access them. The next feature in the "real extras" are the "Textless Songs" which permit you to view the English and Japanese openings and closings without anything covering the animation.
There are also "Behind the Kanij" translations for foreign names (which also have Japanese cultural explanations which most viewers would have no other way of finding out about). Other "Extras" which aren't always necessarily there (depending on the episodes) are "Fighting Techniques" and "Super Titles." Fighting techniques are a list and explanation of all the moves used and "Super Titles" are translations for whenever something appears written in kanij onscreen. (which happens a lot) A pretty handy guide. Sometimes there are also "bonus" extras like a deleted scene from the 3rd DVD that is a humorous and plot information-filled exchange between two characters about Reihado. That DVD also has a "Tournament Matches" section which shows how high everybody's 3 scores were during the preliminary rounds.
Now let's go back to the first extras menu. Below "Yama's Notebook" is "Trailers" which is a list of advertisements for FUNimation's other anime products. On the Z episodes and movie DVD's I always shun this feature as I find it extremely insulting for FUNimation to even suggest that I should consider something like that an "extra." However, in the Yu Yu Hakusho DVD's I feel no animosity at all about checking this section out and I sometimes make a point of doing so just for curiousity's sake. Then there are the "DVD Credits" which give you a list of the talented people who made these menu's. And finally, ALL of the English AND Japanese episodes are shown 100% uncut.
So, the DVD's are pretty much perfect. What about the Yu Yu Hakusho anime itself? How is it? It... is very good. I'll leave it at that since there are other places that describe it better and since I'd hate to spoil any of it for you. Anyway, I first got interested in it when I read a manga story in Shonen Jump #3 about it. Then I remembered earlier how FUNimation Yu Yu director and VA Josh Martin commented on how he had seen the series 6 times and had already read all fan-translations of all the mangas. And I also remember Gen boasting in an interview about how it was the only show to ever compete head-to-head with DBZ. Originally Gen's comments caused me to want to avoid the show like the plague and left no impression on me, but seeing Yu Yu Hakusho in it's manga form convinced me that I wanted to learn and see more.
And I have. There are some flaws with the set though. First of all it's made of cheap, easy to break cardboard. Annoying, but liveable- though I certainly wouldn't mind paying an extra $5 for a boxed casing that would last for several years. Next I think the "Super Titles" should each contain only one episode's worth of translations on each page, and leave blank pages for episodes with no kanij writing. The reason why is because I accidentally spoiled episode 25 while viewing this section. Not cool. Finally, the English episodes don't list all the names of the Japanese cast. They translate the names of all of the Japanese cast members mentioned in the kanji introduction credits but they only translate some of the names the Japanese cast members listed in the ending credits. Aside from that... it's perfect. Best of all, this boxed set stops right after a certain saga and doesn't leave the viewer on too powerful of a cliff-hanger, making the wait for the next boxed set much more bearable.
Last of all, let's look at the English version. I haven't seen enough to do a detailed comparison but... it is a pretty good dub from the few episodes I've seen. Sure, there's a bit of ventriloquist dialogue, some name/attack changes and other dialogue changes (justifiable for when they talk about "English" attack names, though- some of the stuff they add in for that is hilarious) but it is easily 100X better than the DBZ dub. I even prefer Kent Williams's "Heie" and narrator over the original Japanese voices. Kent is easily FUNimation's number one VA and he does a top-notch job with these roles. The original narrator sounds good (just not as good) and Heie... well, he sounds good too but he sounds a little bit TOO familiar to different VA Ryo Horikawa's Vegeta voice, so I like Kent's voice better. Yusuke... is a pretty good American version of the voice. I just like the Japanese one better.
Kurama sounded crappy at first but is now fitting into the role. Botan- an English accent? It's okay, I guess, just sounds too mature and "grown-up" for the character of Botan. And last, and least of all... Kuwabara. Man, does his voice SUCK in the dub! The VA who does him is Chris Sabat and he constantly drifts between sounding like his voice for Yajirobi and Vegeta. It's annoying and it doesn't fit Kuwabara at all. Kuwabara is a macho, head-strong youth who's very proud, aggressive and who always tries to act tough. Yajirobi's voice is too goofy for him and reusing the exact same voice for Vegeta is just too over-played. Chris Sabat has gotten a lot of flack for giving Kuwabara this voice so hopefully it'll undergo a dramatic and totally different change in the latter episodes. Now for the music... the English intro sounds not quite as good as the J. version but it's still very good. The ending song... really sounds awful. The singing's not very good, the "remixed" music sounds lame and the lyrics aren't as good as in the original Japanese song. This is the one bit of music that really pales in comparison top the Japanese original, but it's definitely better than "Rock the Dragon" or the "Dragon Ball Z Theme Song."
Overall, dubbed Yu Yu Hakusho's main problems on tv are the censorship, which are the exact opposite of the DBZ dub's problems because censorship is the least of them. The animation also looks inferior compared to the DVD episodes. But whether you're a "dubbie" or "subbie" chances are you'll find something to enjoy on these DVD's. That being said, I personally think that the Yu Yu Hakusho DVD set is the best anime deal I've ever seen in the United States. At it's price it's affordable without leaving you the annoying feeling that you've been fleeced (cough, $200 Trigun DVD set, cough) and it's content is top-notch. And if you watch it and decide you don't like it- you can always just sell it on e-bay for $40-50 and recoup your loss. So if you're an anime fan, especially one of DBZ, I cannot too strongly recommend that you check out this set. One last thing- if you buy it and decide that you like it then please e-mail FUNimation at their Yu Yu Hakusho site and tell them what you think. From what I've heard, FUNimation gets so many complaint letters on a daily basis that they're almost completely jaded to any type of criticism, so I think it's important that we praise them and let them know that they should keep doing what they're doing when they do do something right.
- GreatSaiyaman777
